Breaking down the Canadian junior team

TORONTO — They had the 22 players they wanted on the ice for the team photo, but they did not know which of their two goaltenders would start, which of their veterans would wear the captain’s ‘C’ on his sweater, or exactly what the team would look like when the games begin for real later this month.

Canada’s junior hockey team has sketched the outline, naming its roster Wednesday for the world junior championship, but it still has to colour in several open spaces.

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“We don’t really know what kind of team we’re going to have right now,” said returning centre Brayden Schenn. “If you look at all our guys, we’ve got a lot of skill up front, big D-men on the back and two solid goalies, as well.”

With selection camp closed, coach Dave Cameron will put the team through its first real practice in Toronto on Thursday before it shifts its home base to Niagara Falls, closer to where the 2011 IIHF World Junior Championship will be held, in Buffalo, N.Y.

“There is going to be a blue-collar work ethic, and there is going to be a lot of skilled players on this team,” defenceman Erik Gudbranson said. “But you’re going to see a lot of guys chipping pucks in deep, going to get it and winning battles.”

Here is a positional breakdown of Canada’s roster:

FORWARDS
If you were big and you could skate, you were probably Cameron’s kind of forward. His coaching staff cut the only three forwards in camp who weighed less than 180 pounds on Wednesday, sending talented 17-year-old Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (166 pounds) and roommate Brandon Pirri (171) back to their regular clubs.

Schenn (Brandon Wheat Kings) is not the biggest body, but he is the biggest offensive name left on the roster. He will be a marquee in a group liberally sprinkled with workmanlike forwards, and if camp was any indication, not many are capable of scoring in bunches.

“I respect what [John] Tavares and [Jordan] Eberle and [Taylor] Hall have done for our program, but they’re not here,” Cameron said. “So we’re going to find a way.”

DEFENCE
This will be the engine of the team, led by three of Canada’s four returning players. Ryan Ellis (Windsor Spitfires) will become only the seventh player to represent Canada three times at the event, while Calvin de Haan (Oshawa Generals) and Jared Cowen (Spokane Chiefs) are also a year older and wiser — not to mention bigger and stronger.

The Canadian blue line features three players who stand at least 6-foot-4, and it has four players who weigh more than 200 pounds. Gudbranson (Kingston Frontenacs) will make his first appearance at the tournament, along with Simon Despres (Saint John Sea Dogs), Dylan Olsen (University of Minnesota-Duluth) and Tyson Barrie (Kelowna Rockets). Barrie is the only defenceman who was not a first-round pick in the NHL draft.

GOALTENDING
None of the four goaltenders invited to camp did much to assert primacy at the position, with Olivier Roy (Acadie-Bathurst Titan) and Mark Visentin (Niagara IceDogs) avoiding calamity long enough to outlast two other challengers. Neither teenager has been appointed the starter, with Cameron suggesting the job will be awarded based on three exhibition games.

Goaltending coach Ron Tugnutt will spend the next week working on minor details such as the adjustment to international rules. He will not tinker with their mechanics.

“There’s no time to put the reason of doubt in their minds,” he said. “There’s no reason to change anything they’ve been doing. They’re here because they’re good enough to be here.”

COACHING
There was never a moment, in two intrasquad scrimmages and one exhibition, where one player pulled anyone out of their seats with a jolt of electric creativity on the ice. And that seems to suit Cameron, whose vision for the team is one stocked with fast, hard-working and physical players who buy into his system.

The 52-year-old spent 168 games in the National Hockey League as the kind of player who was only going to go as far as his work ethic would allow, and the survival of that ethos has certainly contributed to the “blue collar” descriptions attached to this team.

“Dave is an elite coach at the junior hockey level,” Hockey Canada vice-president Brad Pascall said. “He has a great résumé.”

INTANGIBLES
Standing at centre ice a few minutes after the team photo had been taken on Wednesday, Cameron repeated a question someone asked earlier in the week: “Is the nature of this tournament, the way it’s built over the years, is it unrealistic in the pressure it puts on these kids?”

He thought it was a good question.

And nowhere is that pressure greater than in Canada, where the juniors had a run of five straight gold medals snapped earlier this year. But after a series of exhibition games — including one against Sweden under the glare of the Air Canada Centre lights on Dec. 21 in Toronto — perhaps no team will be more prepared to deal with that pressure than Canada.